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Coming soon to an internet near you: Switzerland’s creepy ‘naked cat’

One of the great feats of human invention, the internet has become a great place to share fake news…and images of weird-looking cats.

Published: 10 April 2018 11:07 CEST
Coming soon to an internet near you: Switzerland’s creepy 'naked cat'
Love at first sight? File photo of a Sphynx cat: Depositphotos

Among the latest feline stars is heavily-wrinkled Xherdan from Rüti in the canton of Zurich.

The five-year-old Sphynx cat is named after Swiss footballer Shaqiri who plays for UK premiere league club Stoke City. But it is his looks – reminiscent of US star cat Tardar Sauce, better known as Grumpy Cat – that have won him online attention.

“When people see pictures of him online, they usually find him ugly. But when they meet him and find out how sweet he is, they usually change their mind,” Xherdan’s owner Sandra Filippi told Swiss tabloid Blick.

Filippi also explained that Xherdan, who is a big fan of avocadoes, is not actually naked but has very fine hair.

“His hair feels like a peach: warm and soft,” she said.

Read also: Switzerland has too many fat cats – literally

“I love my other cats as well, but Xherdan was special from the start,” said the owner of three cats.

Sphynx cats are the products of selective breeding and have distinctive features including large ears and a muscular body. They have no coats but their skin is the colour of the hair they would usually have.

 

 

INTERNET

EU greenlights €200M for Spain to bring super fast internet speeds to rural areas

Brussels has approved a plan which will bring high-speed broadband internet to the almost 1 in 10 people in Spain who live in underpopulated rural areas with poor connections, a way of also encouraging remote workers to move to dying villages. 

Published: 15 June 2021 10:09 CEST
EU greenlights €200M for Spain to bring super fast internet speeds to rural areas
The medieval village of Banduxo in Asturias. Photo: Guillermo Alvarez/Pixabay

The European Commission has given Spain the green light to use €200 million of the funds allocated to the country through the Next Generation recovery plan to offer internet speeds of up to 300 Mbps (scalable to 1Gb per second) to rural areas with slow internet connections. 

According to Brussels, this measure will help guarantee download speeds of more than 100 Mbps for 100 percent of the Spanish population in 2025.

Around 8 percent of Spain’s population live in areas where speeds above 100Mbs are not available, mostly in the 6,800 countryside villages in Spain that have fewer than 5,000 inhabitants.

European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen plans to travel to Madrid on Wednesday June 16th to hand over to Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez the approved reform plan for Spain. 

Back in April, Spain outlined its Recovery and Resilience plan aimed at revitalising and modernising the Spanish economy following the coronavirus crisis, with €72 billion in EU grants over the next two years.

This includes green investments in energy transition and housing, boosting science and technology education and digital projects such as the fast-speed internet project which aims to avoid depopulation in rural areas. 

It’s worth noting that these plans set out €4.3 billion for broadband internet and 5G mobile network projects in rural areas in Spain, so this initial investment should be the first of many.

Over the past 50 years, Spain’s countryside has lost 28 percent of its population as Spaniards left to find jobs in the big cities. 

The gap has been widening ever since, local services and connections with the developed cities have worsened, and there are thousands of villages which have either been completely abandoned or are at risk of dying out. 

READ MORE:

How Spaniards are helping to save the country’s 4,200 villages at risk of extinction

rural depopulation spain

The pandemic has seen a considerable number of city dwellers in Spain move or consider a move to the countryside to gain space, peace and quiet and enjoy a less stressful life, especially as the advent of remote working in Spain can allow for this. 

Addressing the issue of poor internet connections is one of the best incentives for digital workers to move to the countryside, bringing with them their families, more business and a new lease of life for Spain’s villages.

READ ALSO:

Nine things you should know before moving to rural Spain

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